iv FORM AND BECOMING 325 



states in which / / might at any instant be immobilized. 

 But with these successive states, perceived from without 

 as real and no longer as potential immobilities, you 

 will never reconstitute movement. Call them qualities, 

 forms, positions, or intentions, as the case may be, multiply 

 the number of them as you will, let the interval between 

 two consecutive states be infinitely small : before the 

 intervening movement you will always experience 

 the disappointment of the child who tries by clapping 

 his hands together to crush the smoke. The move 

 ment slips through the interval, because every 

 attempt to reconstitute change out of states implies 

 the absurd proposition, that movement is made of 

 immobilities. 



Philosophy perceived this as soon as it opened its 

 eyes. The arguments of Zeno of Elea, although 

 formulated with a very different intention, have no 

 other meaning. 



Take the flying arrow. At every moment, says 

 Zeno, it is motionless, for it cannot have time to move, 

 that is, to occupy at least two successive positions, 

 unless at least two moments are allowed it. At a given 

 moment, therefore, it is at rest at a given point. 

 Motionless in each point of its course, it is motion 

 less during all the time that it is moving. 



Yes, if we suppose that the arrow can ever be in a 

 point of its course. Yes again, if the arrow, which is 

 moving, ever coincides with a position, which is motion 

 less. But the arrow never is in any point of its course. 

 The most we can say is that it might be there, in this 

 sense, that it passes there and might stop there. It is 

 true that if it did stop there, it would be at rest there, 

 and at this point it is no longer movement that we 

 should have to do with. The truth is that if the 



